E-books to outsell print by 2018 says new report

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

Tor has gone DRM free as have a few others and while they say it hasn't hurt business, they do not say it has helped business in any way.

They are not paying the Adobe tax any more; I would think that might help business.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by conan50

Also possible that ebook formats could shift quickly enough to leave some people and their devices ebooks behind.

I can see a future where the cheapest way to buy a book is to purchase it pre-loaded onto a thin, portless, no-WiFi, eReader having only that book in memory. Such titles might be internally protected by DRM, but, with such a device, it's hardly necessary.

Then, what happens to eBooks that can be loaded onto any device? Well, maybe the market stays divided into two, like today. Branded/genre/indie stays cheap and DRM-free. But well-reviewed professionally edited books, that can go on any device, will be both rather expensive, and protected by DRM schemes. They should be more expensive, because of greater flexibility and not having to carry around multiple devices.

All by 2018? No.

Originally Posted by conan50

DRM could be dropped tomorrow, and if publishers had half of a brain and wished to stop being Amazon's slave they would drop DRM.

Then the problem is short-term only. Non-DRM publishers will outbid the big five on advances, while making more money than the allegedly less-than-half-a-brain English major dodo birds at Hachette and friends.

Originally Posted by conan50

When books are less expensive, and easy to use on any ereader, piracy will end.

If books become cheaper, that means lower advances. And that means the kind of authors I tend to read will not be able to spend years of international traveling to research their books. So they will have to write worse books, or stick to their day job. Which in turn means I won't have any incentive to pirate non-fiction, and I can't see there ever being a shortage of legitimately free and good fiction.

Of course, in the real world, most of the books people take without authorization are fiction. And yet, guess what! Fiction is, by and large, cheaper!

Book piracy, and other forms of obtaining books without compensating producers, have been going on for centuries. This will never end, or at least will not end until we have evolved into what amounts to a new species.

P.S. I'd feel a bit of a fake if I didn't mention that, right now, I am reading a, gulp, current international bestselling novel. No recommendation implied, as at 74 percent through I haven't yet decided what I think. And of course, I wouldn't and didn't pirate it, despite not being able to easily afford it. Thank you, Harper Collins, for selling to libraries through Axis360.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

They are protecting against the fact that some people might borrow it and give a copy to someone else who might have bought the book or might have borrowed it themselves.

But that is not specific for libraries. That is true for books sold without DRM also. So this is not relevant for this discussion which was a discussion about in what way libraries was special so DRM was absolutely needed.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by tompe

But that is not specific for libraries. That is true for books sold without DRM also. So this is not relevant for this discussion which was a discussion about in what way libraries was special so DRM was absolutely needed.

What's special is that library books have to expire on a given date. Non-library books don't.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

What's special is that library books have to expire on a given date. Non-library books don't.

No, they do not have to expire.

[HarryT]

If they didn't expire, the library would be giving you the book, not lending it to you.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by HarryT

If they didn't expire, the library would be giving you the book, not lending it to you.

Even the Amazon Prime Library books expire; they don't have a fixed return date but you can't check out another until you check it back in. And you lose it if the Prime subscription expires.

I have a similar quibble with the "open epub" honor system library "loans". To me they're just permafree titles distributed through libraries.

To each their own semantics.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

If they didn't expire, the library would be giving you the book, not lending it to you.

A paperbook does not expire but they are not giving me the book. A condition for lending the book could be that you erase it when you have read it. So the are then not giving the book away.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

If they didn't expire, the library would be giving you the book, not lending it to you.

Even if that was true what is the problem? You cannot give the book away since that is copyright infringement. In what way does this hurt the library?

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by tompe

Even if that was true what is the problem? You cannot give the book away since that is copyright infringement. In what way does this hurt the library?

The publishers don't trust everyone. They would not make the books available to the library without DRM. Some do not make the books available even with DRM.

And yes you are supposed to erase it but you don't have to.

You may trust everyone and leave your doors unlocked and let perfect strangers access your stuff feely, but it seems the publishers don't and I doubt we can force them to do so.

Helen

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by tompe

A paperbook does not expire but they are not giving me the book. A condition for lending the book could be that you erase it when you have read it. So the are then not giving the book away.

The analog equivalent to the digital concept of expirations would be those overdue fees.

Currently, there are Open Epubs offered through OverDrive -- a tiny minority, oftentimes drek, not by anny of the major publishers, and I would guess that large numbers of patrons that check out one of these books do not bother to delete them. Despite the fact that it is a requirement.

Lack of restrictions works out well for something that belongs to you and isn't supposed to have restrictions. Library books are supposed to have restrictions. It is the only place where DRM actually makes perfect sense

Originally Posted by tompe

Even if that was true what is the problem? You cannot give the book away since that is copyright infringement. In what way does this hurt the library?

The problem is that you cannot keep the book either, since that too is copyright infringement. And no, it has nothing to do with hurting the library, and everything to do with hurting the publisher and author.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

The publishers don't trust everyone. They would not make the books available to the library without DRM. Some do not make the books available even with DRM.

And yes you are supposed to erase it but you don't have to.

You may trust everyone and leave your doors unlocked and let perfect strangers access your stuff feely, but it seems the publishers don't and I doubt we can force them to do so.

Well, Tor books are sold without DRM so why would they not make books available?

As I said, for the publisher it does not matter if you do not erase the book after you have read it since you will not buy the book anyway.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by tompe

Well, Tor books are sold without DRM so why would they not make books available?

They're not sold to libraries without DRM. All books supplied by Overdrive have DRM.

As I said, for the publisher it does not matter if you do not erase the book after you have read it since you will not buy the book anyway.

Of course it matters to the publisher if libraries are giving away free books. It's called "piracy".

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by tompe

Well, Tor books are sold without DRM so why would they not make books available?

As I said, for the publisher it does not matter if you do not erase the book after you have read it since you will not buy the book anyway.

You won't read the book again and neither will I. many others do. And some of them even buy it.

But this is not what the publishers worry about. They worry about the honest systems who see no harm giving a copy to their mother and their sister etc. who may give them to a friend or their mother-in-law, who may in turn give a copy to their inlaws or friends.

And then their are the pirates. Jim Butcher had a study done that found there were 10 of his books pirated for every one sold. Even if only 1 in 10 people actually read the book and would have bought or borrowed it legitimately he is probably out a million or so.

You keep saying the authors and publishers and libraries could give up DRM but you give no reason they should other than that you think they could.

Publishers like Tor who have no DRM are not AFAIK gaining sales. They say they aren't losing sales, but they aren't further ahead and as HarryT pointed out they do not do DRM free for the library.

Why anyone would expect publishers to remove the security measures they feel work at least somewhat is beyond me.

Do you expect the stores to remove their security cameras and leave the doors open at night. Should the banks just pile up the money and letus take what we want? A bit extreme examples I know, but I think it is a bit obstinate of you to expect the publishers etc. to give up DRM just because most of the music industry did. The majority of individuals and businesses and even governments employ some sort of security measures, most of which can be defeated by the determined. Do you protest all of these? Or is it just ebooks and their creators and publishers etc. that you complain about.

Just curious as that seems like discrimination to me.
.

Helen

[meeera]

I do expect B&M shops to not spend time and money on useless security measures that inconvenience their customers and drive up prices. Yes, they should lock their doors. No, they should not insist that everyone who enters their shop should buy a lollipop and twirl an orange ribbon around their head while travelling through the shop. DRM is more like the latter than the former.